


A Secret Chord

by eastfarthing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastfarthing/pseuds/eastfarthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Bellatrix Lestrange's descent into madness, as told by the half-blood vampire she loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Killing Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Story title from Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"

Plenty of stories are told starting at the end. That is the way I chose to tell this story.

No one noticed me in the back of the Great Hall, watching the most important fight in wizarding history. I watched her languid arm fling curses. I watched bodies fall. She smiled so brilliantly, enjoying the mayhem and death and power so thoroughly, I almost did not recognize her. In spite of the glamour I put up, to disguise myself from her, she knew I was there. Her eyes flicked toward me, no matter where I went, between each killing curse she slung. I had made a promise to her. She had to have known I was there to keep it.

A dumpy red-headed woman—who, I must say, was a fierce fighter—was screaming at her. Bella had aimed at a young, red-headed girl, and the frump screamed something about her daughter. Bella knew what was coming—it was in her eyes, dark, at once alive and, knowing what would happen next, terrified and filling with death. She didn’t look the frumpy woman in the eye. She looked just past her, right at me.

As I raised my wand, I looked at the shimmer around her. Magical beings have a pale light that wavers around them at all times. They can’t see it anymore than a Muggle can. It’s a color that belongs outside the spectrum of light visible to mortal beings. Her shimmer began to dim as my wand became parallel to the ground. I thought of the wisp of silver that had surrounded our hands as we made an Unbreakable Vow in the dark of the Room of Requirement in our seventh year at Hogwarts.

I did for her something she had rarely done for anyone. I looked her in the eye as I silently muttered the _Avada Kedavra_ curse. The frumpy woman finished the curse so closely after me, that she believed herself to be the one who killed Bellatrix Lestrange.

To her, I had done my duty. I kept my promise.

I had killed the love of my half-breed life. Then, I left the Great Hall, left Great Britain, and crossed the Pond back to my life in America.


	2. Chapter the First: Heat Rises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Golden Trio meet with Athena, who has a tale to tell. Not only about Bellatrix Lestrange, but also about her parentage.

The sun is coming up. It’s rising over my shoulder as I stare out at the Pacific Ocean, watching the smallest waves and ripples of water rush the shore. I could sit here all day, so very still, and the only thing that would change would be my skin; it would redden, and blister, and finally, sometime before sundown, I suppose, become blackened and flake off. It’s likely that I’d still be alive. Maybe I’d even feel the pain.

I think about this often; however, I enjoy my life and I enjoy not being discovered. But I do spend most mornings on the shore, feeling the heat as it rises from the east.

Today, though, I am waiting. Someone is searching for me. I’ve heard my name in their minds for weeks. I know what they want.

Not far down the beach, from the corner of my eye, I can see the shimmer. Three people, two young men and a woman, are slowly walking through the sand, looking at me. I can hear my name in her mind. She is trying to decide how to greet me. The two men, however, are too busy looking around at the beach. I gather that neither has been to the States before. Their minds aren’t as clear to me as hers is.

These three, I know who they are. The red-headed boy is the son of the woman who thinks she killed Bellatrix. The dark-haired one is the one that finally killed Tom. The girl, well, she’s the brain trust that kept them from dying as they sought to save our world. My father sent them.

They are about twenty feet away when their progression slows, nearly to stopping. I don’t look at them. I’d like to allow the girl to decide how to greet me. She’s been thinking about it for so long.

I can hear her breath, she’s taking quiet, sharp breaths in, making false starts at speaking.

“Are…” She falters, and breathes in for a stronger start, “Are you Athena Castillano?”

The red-head reaches for her hand. He loves her. The change in her skin—I can smell the pheromones—and her breathing gives them away. I don’t even have to look.

I don’t move or speak. It’s been so long since I’ve heard my real name, it’s shocking, even though I knew that’s what she would call me. Hearing in someone’s mind never has the same power or effect of hearing thoughts pronounced with the mouth.

“Minerva Stitchery if anyone else asks,” I say, “but yes, I am Athena Castillano.”

“You’re Dumbledore’s daughter?” The red-head laughs. “You don’t even sound British!”

Irritated, I turn on him, put up a glamour. To him alone, he will see me as a Veela, silver hair, silver voiced, impossible to move away from. “I am whoever you—”

“Stop it!” The woman shouts. “Stop doing that to him.”

The brunette boy, the Boy Who Lived, himself, was beginning to fall into the glamour.

I release them both. “You must be very intelligent to have seen through that. My glamour is somewhat weak, but a strong mind is able to see through it.”

“You’re a vampire?” The Boy reaches for his wand, thinking he’s using subtle movements.

“Half,” I say. “I’m a half-breed.”

“That’s impossible!” Scoffs the red-head, still looking a little dazed.

“Rare,” says the girl, “but not impossible, Ron. You really should have read more in school.”

A low rumble comes from Red’s throat.

“No one really knows why half-breeds are possible,” she continued. “A pregnant woman is bitten and the baby is born half-vampire, half-mortal. They can walk in the sunlight, go for long periods of time without blood, eat and drink just like us.”  
“And we can use glamours,” I smirk at the Boy and Red. Both look away, pink in the face.

“I’m Hermione Granger,” the girl puts her hand out.

Red pulls her arm back. “What if she bites you?” He whispers very low, apparently thinking I won’t be able hear him.  
“Nothing happens.” She tells him. “Half-breed bites are weak and cannot create new vampires. In spite of the evidence to the contrary, half-breeds are often killed by other vampires trying to inherit some of the more favorable powers. Humans have even tried killing half-breeds for the same reason.” She looks at me. “You’ve lived a very long time for being a half-breed.”

“Until you three, very few others knew my blood status.” Their faces appeared in my memory as I counted them. “My mother, who was tied to a tree and killed by vampire hunters in Germany. My grandparents, who died natural deaths, but never told another living soul about me. My uncle, Aberforth, who died a few years ago. My father,” I incline my head toward the Boy, “I believe you saw him die.” He turns his face away. “And Minerva McGonnagall. Before you three, she was the last living person to know what I am.”

“Your secret is safe with us.” Hermione says, looking me intensely in the eye.

“I know what you’ve come here for.” I stand, brushing the sand off my legs. “Once I give it to you, it won’t make a difference to me who you tell. But I will not give it to you until I tell you about her, about who she was before Tom.”  
Heat comes off Ron, his temperature shifts up just slightly, miniscule beads of sweat rise to the surface of his skin. From a few feet away, I can feel the warmth coming from him.

“I know what she did,” I say to him, raising my hands in a plea. “I know what kind of person Bella became. I know she killed your friends, that she killed and tortured your friends’ families. Bellatrix wasn’t always mad. You should know how she became the lunatic you knew her to be. In any case, I will not give you what you’ve come for until you’ve heard her story.”

“She only created the one?” The Boy asks, skeptical.

“Yes.” I reach into my pocket, pressing into my hand the item they’ve come for. “My apartment is about a half a mile north of here. We can have a cup of coffee and talk.”

“Do you mean tea?” Red asks.

“I’m an American now.” I turn away from them and begin walking toward my apartment. “But I will make you some bloody tea.”

“Are you sure you’re not Aberforth’s kid?” Red laughs. Apparently everything is a joke with him.

I rounded on him so fast he literally could not have seen me coming. I put my hand to his throat, pressing my thumb into his wind pipe.

“Never again laugh at Aberforth,” the breath he wheezed out, I took into my chest. “He was a great man. He gave more of a damn about me than your precious Albus, so you keep your mouth—and mind—shut about my uncle. Or you will find yourself dead. And I won’t need a curse to do it. Just good, old-fashioned Muggle know-how. Do you understand?”

He wheezed again and nodded. I let him go with slight shove. As he hit the ground, I admired the deep violet ring at the base of his throat. Then I turned away from them and began walking home, paying little mind to whether they followed me or not.

I try not to listen to them talk. The Boy stays pretty quiet. But the red-head and Hermione argue. She wants him to go back home. Someone’s having a baby and maybe he should be there instead.

The Boy catches up to me. “Please forgive Ron?” He looks back over his shoulder and again at me. He has vampire eyes, sharp and direct, unyielding and unwavering. “He would rather us be at home and never mention another word about Death Eaters or Dark Magic ever again. It’s easier for Ron to ignore what happened than to be here with you, having to remember that a Death Eater disfigured one brother and murdered another. And that Belllatrix Lestrange was just seconds away from killing his sister as well. He makes jokes because it makes it easier.”

I didn’t respond. I continued to walk and he kept pace with me, the other two somewhere behind us.

We reach the building I live in and wait at the entrance for the Red and Hermione. They followed me in and up to the third floor. When I let them in, the ginger immediately expounded, “You live like a Muggle?”

“Magic has done me few favors,” I shrugged at him, trying to remember The Boy’s request. “So I rarely use it.”

While they take seats around my table, I dig around for my rarely-used tea kettle and hope that I have some Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea around somewhere so that the red-head will have one less thing to complain about.

Hermione looks around my house, remembering her own, and I feel some little pang of nostalgia. She is remembering her life before wands and charms and Tom Riddle. She misses it sometimes.

I fill the kettle and put it on the stove, turning the heat high, hoping that it will boil quickly so that at least there would be the business of tea to do. Bella has been dead for so long, and our years at school are even further in my past. It makes me angry that Albus sent them to collect on my memories, as though I owe him. If anyone, I owed Aberforth, but he didn’t have the same undying quest to eradicate. Once the war was over, Aberforth was content to go back to running his bar, tending his goat, and making sure my bed was always made.

The three sit at the table quietly. I listen to the girl’s mind. She thinks she may be pregnant. She wishes her husband would go home to England—she’s afraid he will make me so angry that I will refuse to speak with them, to give them what they came for. She looks at the back of my head as I am looking out the window at the water.

“Your flat is lovely,” she says out loud, just as she was thinking it. “It has a beautiful view.”

I nod. The whistle on the kettle begins to blow, to my minute relief. I busy myself with putting several Earl Grey tea bags into the kettle to steep, and then move on to the refrigerator to pull out some milk. I set the milk onto the table, next to the sugar bowl. I pour them each some tea and indicate with my hands that they should prepare it as they choose.

“Aren’t you going to join us?” Hermione asks.

“You drink your tea.” I turn away from them and back to the window.

The Pacific Ocean is so unlike the Atlantic. I chose this shore over the east coast, knowing it would be markedly different from the land I had left.

“When I met Bellatrix Black, we were on the train to Hogwarts.” They stop drinking their tea. The girl is scrambling in her mind, wondering how she’s going to remember this without pen and paper. “She was in her fourth year and I had been named Ravenclaw prefect over the summer. She was chasing Narcissa down the train after Cissy had stolen sweets from her. I don’t remember what the sweets were. It was Cissy’s first year. I cast a silent Impediment jinx on Cissy. It was a couple more weeks before Bellatrix found out it was me who’d cast the spell. I was in love,” if I could blush, I would. The thought of love, now, is embarrassing. A waste. I clear my throat. “In love with her before then.”

“Got anymore tea?” The ginger boy asks. With some effort, I look into his mind. He wants more tea to have an excuse to leave and go to the bathroom when he gets uncomfortable.

I smirk. “I have all the tea you can drink.”


End file.
